@geartoward the despots tend to be very good optical magicians. they put up a lot of mirrors and wordplay to make you sound terrible for opposing them. like "oh it's just this common sense behavior code" and "well we want more people to be able to do x" and its like yes thats prima facie good ideas, but then comes the selective enforcement (its ok to graphically opine the death of *this* president because brain rot cope, but criticizing *ours* is hate speech censored nazi bar brain rot cope)

in the case of nix they basically.. purged every conservative and vocal moderate from the project, and i think even the founder fucked off from the insanity (not sure) in python's case they banned one of the most foundational long standing members because he kept demanding them explain themselves. they wanted the power to fire anyone from the board without a board vote, because code of conduct or whatever, basically putting non-producing busybodies in sole control of the board (by way of being able to just line-item fire anyone they don't like forever.)

now people are pattern recognition machines writ large. they will notice when every time people come in to town wearing green overalls that suddenly all the children start getting sick and dying. and since they cannot do anything to save their city after the fact, the feedback loop is to start shotgunning everyone who tries to approach the town wearing green overalls.

its basically a case of real, actually bad events, which then get blanket denials thrown around rather than processing and addressing the issue, which trains people to have null faith that reasonable resolutions are possible, and a lot of collateral damage gets caught up in the process.

its awful business and i hate it